Donald Trump has said that, when he got fact checked by moderators in September 10’s presidential debate, the audience “went crazy.” But there was no audience at the debate.
Appearing on Fox News show Gutfeld on Wednesday, the Republican presidential nominee said the “audience” reacted to his unfair treatment during the debate against Vice President Kamala Harris.
“They didn’t correct her [Harris] once and they corrected me,” Trump said. “Everything I said, practically, I think 9 times or 11 times. And the audience was absolutely, they went crazy.”
“And the real, I thought, I walked off and I said, ‘that was a great debate, I loved it.'”
The clip was posted on X by user @Acyn:
The debate moderators fact-checked Trump five times in the debate and fact checked Harris zero times.
There was no audience.
Each time Trump was fact-checked, he had said something demonstrably false, including claiming that Harris’s running mate Tim Walz supported the execution of newborn babies, and that Haitian immigrants in Springfield Ohio are “eating the pets of the people that live there,” a claim which has been verified as false by the City Manager, the Republican Governor of Ohio, and three of the locals who started the rumor (Anthony Harris, Anna Kilgore, and Erika Lee, all of whom have apologized to their Haitian neighbors.
Trump and his running mate JD Vance continue to stand by the allegation.
Trump has continued to insist that he won the debate. However, a significant majority of Newsweek readers, Newsweek writers, many analysts, and even Republican strategists declared it a Harris victory.
Donald Trump during the TV presidential debate against Kamala Harris in Philadelphia. Trump said that, when he got fact checked by moderators in last week’s presidential debate, the audience “went crazy.” There was no audience at the debate.
Alex Brandon/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The gaffe comes amid ongoing concerns about Trump’s age and mental fitness. If elected, at 78, he would be the oldest ever U.S. President to begin a term.
Newsweek has contacted Trump’s campaign for comment.
In recent rally speeches he has confused Pennsylvania with North Carolina, Afghanistan with Alaska, and in May, called former President Jimmy Carter “Jimmy Connors.”
Polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight’s presidential election forecast released on Wednesday, for example, projected that Harris is set to win all seven swing states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—that are being closely watched this fall.
Six of the seven—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—were won by President Joe Biden in 2020 by narrow margins.
The FiveThirtyEight forecast also gave Harris a 66 percent chance of winning in November, compared to Trump’s 34 percent chance.
The election model by another polling aggregator Nate Silver still gives Trump a higher chance of victory—52 percent to 47.6 percent—although the gap has been closing since the debate.
The former president was given a 61.3 percent chance on the day of the debate, while Harris held a 38.4 percent chance.
Meanwhile, betting odds market Polymarket give Harris a 52 percent chance of winning against 47 percent for Trump.
